The Presidente’s shrug was so ruthlessly significant, that Fraisier was compelled to make short work of his parenthetic discourse.

“So distinguished a woman will at once understand why I speak of myself in the first place.  It is the shortest way to the property.”

To this acute observation the lady replied by a gesture.  Fraisier took the sign for a permission to continue.

“I was an attorney, madame, at Mantes.  My connection was all the fortune that I was likely to have.  I took over M. Levroux’s practice.  You knew him, no doubt?”

The Presidente inclined her head.

“With borrowed capital and some ten thousand francs of my own, I went to Mantes.  I had been with Desroches, one of the cleverest attorneys in Paris, I had been his head-clerk for six years.  I was so unlucky as to make an enemy of the attorney for the crown at Mantes, Monsieur—­”

“Olivier Vinet.”

“Son of the Attorney-General, yes, madame.  He was paying his court to a little person—­”

“Whom?”

“Mme. Vatinelle.”

“Oh!  Mme. Vatinelle.  She was very pretty and very—­er—­when I was there—­”

“She was not unkind to me:  inde iroe,” Fraisier continued.  “I was industrious; I wanted to repay my friends and to marry; I wanted work; I went in search of it; and before long I had more on my hands than anybody else.  Bah!  I had every soul in Mantes against me—­attorneys, notaries, and even the bailiffs.  They tried to fasten a quarrel on me.  In our ruthless profession, as you know, madame, if you wish to ruin a man, it is soon done.  I was concerned for both parties in a case, and they found it out.  It was a trifle irregular; but it is sometimes done in Paris, attorneys in certain cases hand the rhubarb and take the senna.  They do things differently at Mantes.  I had done M. Bouyonnet this little service before; but, egged on by his colleagues and the attorney for the crown, he betrayed me.—­I am keeping back nothing, you see.—­There was a great hue and cry about it.  I was a scoundrel; they made me out blacker than Marat; forced me to sell out; ruined me.  And I am in Paris now.  I have tried to get together a practice; but my health is so bad, that I have only two quiet hours out of the twenty-four.

“At this moment I have but one ambition, and a very small one.  Some day,” he continued, “you will be the wife of the Keeper of the Seals, or of the Home Secretary, it may be; but I, poor and sickly as I am, desire nothing but a post in which I can live in peace for the rest of my life, a place without any opening in which to vegetate.  I should like to be a justice of the peace in Paris.  It would be a mere trifle for you and M. le President to gain the appointment for me; for the present Keeper of the Seals must be anxious to keep on good terms with you . . .